How to Keep Your Best Sales Reps From Taking Recruiting Calls
Updated July 8, 2026
Whenever the job market tilts in employees’ favor, your best sales reps start getting calls. Doesn’t matter if it’s a headhunter, a friend at a competitor, or a LinkedIn message that opens with “not looking, but…”
If your top performers are getting recruited, the real question isn’t how to stop the calls. It’s how to make sure they don’t answer.
Employees today have more options than loyalty. Survey after survey shows workers don’t feel much loyalty from their employer in return, and they’re not shy about looking elsewhere when they feel stuck.
“Spending 40-60-80 hours somewhere each week…I want it to mean something. I want to feel like I’m moving forward somehow. If I can’t grow here, I’ve gotta look elsewhere.” — An Employee (perhaps yours), from Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, Beverly Kaye & Julie Winkle Giulioni
So what can you actually do to keep your high-producing sales pros off recruiters’ call lists?
1. Look at Your Comp Plan
Who’s getting paid below market that’s been with your company more than four years? Chances are, if a rep has been with you for five-plus years, their base salary hasn’t kept pace with current market rates. That makes them a recruiting target whether you’ve noticed or not. Run the numbers and see what adjustments you can make before someone else points it out to them.
2. Invest in Career Development
Help your team members grow, on purpose, not by accident. When people feel like they’re moving forward, they’re far more likely to stay and keep contributing to the team’s success. When they feel stuck, they start taking calls.
3. Talk to Your People Before Someone Else Does
Years ago, a rep we’d placed told us he was leaving. When we asked why, it came down to one thing: his manager had spoken to him exactly once that entire year. I was so sad when he told me that. He liked the company, he liked the job, he just didn’t feel like anyone above him knew he existed. That’s an easy problem to fix, and an easy one to ignore until it costs you a good rep.
Compare that to a sales leader we work with now.
He checks in with every one of his managers daily, even if it’s just a quick text or a five-minute call before the day starts. It’s not about tracking numbers. It’s about staying connected. His team feels like they’re actually on the same team, not just people who happen to share a Slack channel.
And because that door is always open, it opens for the harder conversations too, the ones where someone needs to ask for help, flag a problem, or share bad news they’d otherwise sit on. That habit has saved him from finding out about problems too late more than once, and it’s kept his leadership turnover low. Everyone on his team is remote. Nobody feels distant. None of it depends on Slack to make it happen.
Keep the conversations short, keep them regular, and don’t be the manager who talks to his rep once a year. This year will bring new opportunities for your sales team whether you’re ready or not, so make sure the best opportunity they’re considering is the one already in front of them.
